Two top women have been headhunted from Silicon Valley and Manchester by scale-up tech company Broadstone.

Hailing from Silicon Valley, Noelle Batema will come on board as community engagement manager while Jacqui Bland from LADBible in Manchester has been recruited as senior software engineer.

Manchester-based Broadstone is a staffing platform that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to match job-seekers with work opportunities at some of the UK’s largest employers.

The service provides background checks and captures accurate data upfront to verify details, reducing lead times from 12 weeks to just 15 days.

Broadstone is expanding and growing at pace, moving from start-up to scale-up in just over 12 months.

Batema has made the permanent move to Manchester following several years in Silicon Valley working with start-ups such as Deliv and iCracked.

She has successfully grown communities for tech businesses in the USA and will now be responsible for the full lifecycle of building and supporting Broadstone’s communities.

She will also devise, develop and launch strategies for audience engagement, gamification and attracting new members.

“This role stood out to me as an amazing opportunity to bring my experience in community engagement and build customer-focused solutions for an innovative start-up in Manchester,” she said.

“Manchester is a hub of tech talent and I believe Broadstone will disrupt the existing methods of staffing in industries such as recruitment and revolutionise the way both job-seekers and employers view recruitment. I’m excited to be a part of it.”

Bland will join Broadstone’s development team, introducing new agile processes to the business, creating unit tests and planning product roadmaps, as well as ensuring a smooth and efficient user experience.

She said: “I really wanted to be part of a company that provides a valuable service and with the app already successfully filling positions for large UK security companies, it's a very exciting time to join.

“As a developer, I always look for a technical challenge but at Broadstone I also have the opportunity to bring my experiences from working with some very talented individuals in previous roles to help mentor and mould the team here?.

“Broadstone has a really exciting future ahead. I see our app putting the power back into the employee's hand and becoming the place for finding temporary and permanent work.”

Tom Pickersgill, founder and director of Broadstone, added: “We need to ensure we continue to recruit strong hires as we embark on the scale-up stage of our business.

“We have ambitious expansion plans to move our technology into other sectors, aside from security, so Noelle and Jacqui will certainly be key to our success and support us as we enter the next stage in our growth and beyond.”